Dubai’s Hyperloop: moving faster towards the future

Dubai continues to look toward the future, and this year it will host a design competition for the world’s most out-there transport solution. The Dubai Future Foundation has just announced an international competition that will take place in Dubai in September and will see 100 scientists, engineers and tech experts spend 48 hours collaborating to design a Hyperloop station, ‘track’ and system that will take passengers from Dubai to Fujairah in 10 minutes (the trip currently takes about 90 minutes by car).

Based on an idea first put forward by billionaire Elon Musk in 2013, the open-source Hyperloop technology is being developed by a number of companies, university students and independent engineers. The technology intends to transport people and goods in capsules through a global network of tubes at speeds up to 1200kph. This video explains how it works.

Mohammed Al Gergawi, vice chairman and managing director of Dubai Future Foundation, said that development of future transportation solutions will ‘effectively’ change the way people handle their daily tasks, and the way they work and commute. “This will eventually lead to massive global economic growth, and we aim to keep pace with the rapid developments by focusing on smart application of services and innovation in all fields,” he said. “This contest is a great opportunity to explore innovation ideas in the smart transportation sector,” he added.

Hyperloop as a technology is capable of reducing the time required for travel between New York and Beijing to just two hours. The technology for Hyperloop already exists, but this collaborative design competition will see great minds get together to figure out the infrastructure for the super-speedy pods. The fact that the United Arab Emirates is hosting it shows the country’s strong commitment to possibly developing and implementing the futuristic transportation.

“Our goal is to transform the city of Dubai into a global test bed for leading ideas and technologies,” said Sheikh Hamdan. “This is about changing the world today.”

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